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Tension fills Civil Wars' new album, hiatus

Last November, when the Civil Wars unexpectedly released a vague statement canceling a tour but promising new music, fans were left confused and wondering what happened. Now the duo has a new album out.

NASHVILLE — Last November, when the Civil Wars unexpectedly released a vaguely worded statement canceling a planned tour but promising new music, the acoustic duo left fans confused and wondering what the heck had happened.

Nine months later, "I'm trying to figure it out, too," says Joy Williams, one half of the Grammy Award-winning duo that sold more than 800,000 copies of its independently issued 2011 album Barton Hollow and will release a second, The Civil Wars, on Aug. 6. Williams is sitting in the screened-in porch at her house, in the spot where she and musical partner John Paul White wrote The One That Got Away, the new album's first single.

"It's a fair and noble question to ask what happened," Williams says. "It's not a cheap shot or backing out to say I don't know. The reality is I don't know where we stand. You have to be in communication to figure that out. Right now, that's not happening."

Williams, 30, lives in Nashville with her husband, who manages the duo, and their year-old son. White, 40, lives in Alabama with his wife and four children. The two singers have not communicated directly since completing The Civil Wars this spring. White also has declined interviews and did not respond when contacted by USA TODAY. But Williams, who chooses her words very thoughtfully when discussing the act's status and, especially, its future, believes it would be a mischaracterization to say they've broken up.

"I don't blame anyone for feeling that way, but, personally, it's hard for me to hear that," Williams says. Hiatus, she says, is a more accurate term. "There are plenty of bands over the course of history that have not been on speaking terms for a season."

With their first album, Williams and White found more success than they'd ever envisioned. The duo built its audience largely through a savvy combination of TV appearances, social media and word of mouth — though some of those mouths, like those of admirers Adele and Taylor Swift, had mighty big platforms. Though they'd been paired randomly at a songwriting event, they found they had a musical chemistry that bordered on the mystical.

"The dynamic between John Paul and I, when all pistons were firing, was a sight to behold, even to us," Williams says. However, "the very same chemistry, creatively, that was so dynamic was also something that, when it was off-kilter, was really difficult to navigate."

The songs on Barton Hollow were often playful, creating a romantic tension that had some listeners assuming the two were more than professionally involved. The Civil War displays a darker tension, one that feels more desperate, more strained. If Barton Hollow bore the ache of emotional proximity, The Civil Wars has the ache of emotional distance.

Contrary to some assumptions, that distance wasn't physical, though. The two recorded the new album in largely the same fashion they did Barton Hollow.

"People assume this was a completely patchwork album," with the singers working and recording separately, Williams says. "That's not the case. We wrote the songs in the same rooms, and we recorded them together in the same room we recorded Barton Hollow in."

In the studio, producer Charlie Peacock inadvertently found himself in the position of playing Switzerland. In an e-mail, Peacock says he found both musicians "amazingly professional in the studio" and that "emotionally, all I sensed or discerned was fatigue."

Peacock calls Williams "a combination of inspiration and analysis," whereas White "is more a quiet artist who doesn't speak often, but when he does, you want to listen."

"One type of artist feels comfort in considering every angle and talking through the options, another might feel less inclined to talk about music and more just to make it. If that's true of the two of them, and I think it is, that's where I thought our tensions lay."

When the duo released the statement canceling the fall tour, they cited "internal discord and irreconcilable differences of ambition" as the reasons for their decision.

"I'm a very ambitious person," Williams admits. "I love plowing new ground and finding new territories to create in. I think our ambition levels are very different at this point in time. John Paul has made it very clear that he wants to be home with his family. I respect that. I'm also really proud of this album, and that's a bit of a difficult position to be in. But not impossible. Not impossible at all."

Williams says she's proud of having forged The Civil Wars "out of pain and anger and hurt and misunderstanding. … What's remarkable is that out of this tension came really emotional music."

She says she understands fans' desire for a concrete, black-and-white answer concerning the duo's status, but "the reality is there isn't one." However, she doesn't like to consider the possibility that the new album might also be the Civil Wars' final one.

"I'll never say never," she says. "I believe so much in the work we do, and I believe in the music we make. I can only speak for me and say I believe it's more than possible to mend some of the bridges that have been burned, if we both choose to do that."